Aleksander Gestorben
Aleksander Gestorben commonly called Alek is a 2016-introduced and all-around character. He is the successor of the youth in "Death's Messangers". In the destiny conflict he sides with the Roybels, viewing his destiny as something unavoidable yet not quite desirable. After spending his early life on the run, Aleksander unpredictable as he is unreal, enrolled Ever After High only to find himself merging into certain cliques and establishing relationships that may make death a far more unpleasant experience that he would like it to be. Personality People and fairytales, both have a natural inclination towards tragedy. If they drive by a car wreck they will crane their necks to observe any carnage. It’s an innate longing for strife and a humbling reminder of how easily the human condition is subjugated by far more superior concerts, such as the inevitability of death or the reminder that it could be fair worse. For Aleksander, this natural inclination is overwhelmingly exacerbated. If there is any tragedy, such as a murder or a morbid destiny, Aleksander will not be able to stop thinking about it until he's fairly sure he can paint it in his head, until it's fully blended in with a tragedy of his own. The concept of death seems far more real when you tend to get close to it. It's a terrible reminder of how his story does truly end. He is quite aware of it and admittedly far less concerned that he'd like to be. There's a certain thrill to living to die, after all. A permanent ache in his gut, one that he can not quite determine as horror or longing, His tender nature allows him to become the deer that's going to be slaughtered without a doubt, without any attempt to escape as his obscenely stubborn self-reliance, refuses to allow him to ask for help even when it is clear he cannot go on without it. His constant connection to death causes a feeling of uneasiness and anxiety, a product of his secret fear for the morbid and his love for beauty. This is the primary reason he usually refrains from any sort of violence. His days are rounded by a palpable calmness. In the empty spaces where his time could have been consumed by some sort of teenage life crisis, he reads literature instead. He will read anything, from his beloved classics to nursery rhymes - which must be a side effect of his greed for knowledge, the fear of dying oblivious. Alek often has difficulty sleeping. If he is in a state of mind of stress or paranoia, whether if it's actually during chaos, work load, disorganization or simply, the constant fear for his life, where he's generally attentive and tense, his thoughts are much louder than the silence that surrounds him making it difficult to even sleep for a few hours. It's not just physical, it's mental as well, because in a state of paranoia he's more prone to nightmares and occasionally violent night terrors. It's one of the reasons he won't stay with anyone at night, trying not to startle them with the sudden acting out of his not exactly pleasant dreams. Aleksander does not talk much and is prone to remaining silent, a habit he has formed from his early years as a teenage runaway. When on the run, it's essential that you're as closeted as possible, because in reality, it's not the world that's cruel, it's the people in it. He is afraid that if he opens his mouth, a word vomit regarding everything he is afraid everything will intensify. He chooses to refrain from any sort of affectionate relationship outside his clique of greek myth loving misfits, simply because he does not have the capacity to feel any sort of guilt when he dies; he is extremely intimidated by the idea of people missing him when he's gone but again, he can not wholly detach himself in danger of remorse; he is a lovable creature, someone in constant need of exclamations of love and affection. He does crave physical touch, as he has forgotten what it's like to not be touched in a harmful manner; it makes him feel a lot more comfortable and is guaranteed to stop a panic attack. A hand in his hair is sometimes a lot more useful than a few comforting words. Now, if the hand is accompanied by a kiss, the uneasiness will disappear with it. He's in love with not exactly love, but with the actions that declare it; it's quite convenient if you think about it - casual relationships do help him avoid attachment but manage to satisfy his dependance on affection. People who have similar interests as him often provide suitable company for him as she doesn’t feel the pressure to fill the space between them with words and fragments of his pats and future. He does not essentially prefer silence but he can much more easily palate the company of someone he does not feel comfortable with if they sit in silence. Aleksander really finds it interesting how people are essentially immortalized after death. He's particularly interested in the family dynamics / juxtaposition of it all – how a king's wife can age ten years after the murder of her husband, but her husband will forever be stuck in the same age, perpetually stuck in people’s memory as an age years younger than he would actually be had he not been murdered. It’s a testimony to the fact that life continues on outside of death and that the world doesn’t stop for anyone. He typically is a reserved individual who speaks the bare minimun with company. He is keen to keep a low profile and be unnoticeable if not unknowable. However, if provoked or mocked, Alek can reveal thin patience and snappy remarks. All of his friends have suggested at least once that he attends some sort of anger management club, which unfortunately for them only managed to fuel his wrath. When angry he is totally opposed to everything he is asked to do and does his best to intensify the situation. His anger is most notable through his mouth, which seems to have a mind of its own, ( refusing to consider any aspects where it would get him in trouble ). He is purposefully difficult. Understanding him takes wits, when he soughts to dry your patience and leave you with an arid chest. The only factors that could witness the softer side of him are the ones who he lets look past his jumble of lies and meaningless murmurs, which he has to admit, is a very rare occurrence. Nothing is acted out before planned in advance, while simultanously remaining unpredictable. Everything he performs comes with layers of intent, moments where expected patterns or blows dissolve into something else. Traits MBTI Alek is an''' ISTP'. His stubbornness, difficulty with others’ emotions, focus on the moment, and easy boredom can lead to unnecessary and unhelpful boundary-pushing, just for fun. Istps have been known to escalate conflict and danger just to see where it goes, something that can have disastrous consequences for everyone around if they lose control of the situation, which he has grown to avoid after multiple times of his sharp tongue and quick decisions on the run cost him a lot. Alek has a habit of making strings of questionable decisions. He comes from a family and childhood that failed to educate him on morals, therefore his moral compass can fidget every now and then, as much as he’s trying to blend with society. Enneagram He is a type ' 4 - The Individualist''' ( the sensitive, introspective type ). He is Dramatic, Self-Absorbed, and Temperamental. Fours are self-aware, sensitive, and reserved. They are emotionally honest, creative, and personal, but can also be moody and self-conscious. Withholding themselves from others due to feeling vulnerable and defective, they can also feel disdainful and exempt from ordinary ways of living. They typically have problems with melancholy, self-indulgence, and self-pity. They want to express themselves and their individuality, to create and surround themselves with beauty, to maintain certain moods and feelings, to withdraw to protect their self-image, to take care of emotional needs before attending to anything else, to attract a "rescuer." Alignment He is a Chaotic Neutral. '''Chaotic neutral characters believe that there is no order to anything, including their own actions. With this as a guiding principle, they tend to follow whatever whim strikes them at the moment. Good and evil are irrelevant when making a decision. Temperament He is a '''Choleric (short-tempered, fast, or irritable), They demand respect from others, and will hold grudges against those that they consider to be rivals. They can be great, supportive friends who’d take a bullet for those close to them, unless you get on their bad side, in which case they’ll try their best to ‘rub your nose into the dirt’. Hobbies For someone that is going to die and utterly terrified of it and the concept of just not doing enough before he does, Alek is sure not doing much about it besides religiously reading and reading and reading until his head and heart aches and he feels somewhat complete. The classics hosted in almost destroyed copies in multiple languages he had purchased to distract himself from the run are frequently reread by him as they provide a temporary sense of belonging and familiarity. Even if he does not mention it much, he also is prone to reading young adult fiction which he finds rather amusing. This obsession with reading led to his grand entrance at the infamous Literature Club consisting of him and a obscure bunch of fellow fairytales that have expressed a love for it. At first, Alek thought it was rather strange that most of their meetings were not spent reading and talking about it, but after a few traumatizing afternoons of everyone's dose of unnecessary dramatics he actually grew more fond of the members than he ever planned to. Although he would aggressively deny it, he thoroughly appreciates art and the process of creating it. He carries around a small sketchbook that he messily draws in whenever he feels some sort of discomfort or just wants to capture a moment the way only he can see it. He sort of believes in the concept of remaking the world through this; everything he draws is all clean and smooth lines, everything seems ideal and perfect. Everything he can't have, he draws. As mentioned before he has always been more interested in reading about art rather than making it. It’s most definitely because he associates artists as being outcasts or people that weren’t able to fit in easily. It’s something he relates to because growing up, nobody used to believe him when he’d tell them he was seeing things, he was running away from death. He doesn’t have any favorite artists, though. This is also not to say that he isn't inspired by them, because he sometimes finds himself trying to recreate particular pieces that he likes, and it always has more to do with what the painting actually means to him, to the artist, what he’s read bout in relation to it. So the times that he does recreate the piece, it won’t be step to step imitation, but just the image that forms in his head, with his own twist. You'd think his original works would be pretty dark and gloomy considering the kid's situation but that's usually not his thing and he raly even tries to paint out negative feelings. Half the time he draws really intricate flowers sketchy portraits of people he thinks are pretty and sceneries he remembers from some of the places he's been to. Appearance Alek is actually quite short compared to his friends, standing a bit below 5'6. He is slender, structured by bones unusually delicate for a boy, almost birdlike. His shoulders are lacking broadness and are constantly pointed inwards due to the super necessary constant occupation of his fingers. His skin is tan and rough, used to harsh sunlight, even in the wintertime. From afar, his face looks striking, all pretty and innocent but if you are granted permission to take a closer look you will immediately notice that his face radiates an obscure strangeness. It almost seems as is Grimm was a big drunk when he made him. A little bit of this. A little bit of that. Brown eye. Green eye. Crooked nose, crooked mouth. Lunatic smile. Chipped tooth. Scar here, scar there. It's a composition of obscure features that either looks holy or sinful depending, as Alek says, on the lighting. His eyes are long, almond shaped fanning out with lashes black as soot, not particularly long but definitely noticeable. He was born with complete heterochromia which causes the coloring of his pupils, one sea green, one dark enough for the iris to almost unnoticeable. Upon enrolling the school, he used to wear brown contacts in order to remain as subtle as possible, but later gave them up. Alek has dark brown hair cut in uneven bangs than fall into his eyes.He has a crooked button nose go match his crooked mouth framed by heart shaped lips, which are permanently bitten raw and stained red. His face is so colorful, vivid, lived-in, superbly off-kilter, brimming with dark, unpredictable music. Everything about is suggest violence but there's an unmistakable kindness in the eyes that seems to soothe everything. His entire body is covered in a variety of scars from his 'teenage runaway' phase. Instead of being self conscious about them, he likes to brutally ignore them even when they are pointed out. He views them as a Brutal marks of a hideous childhood. It all starts at the base of his throat,a looping scar curving down over his collarbone. A pucker with jagged edges is a finger width away, courtesy of a bullet that hit him right on the edge of his kevlar vest. A shapeless patch of pale skin from his left shoulder to his navel marked where he’d jumped out of a moving car and torn himself raw on the asphalt. Faded scars crisscross here and there from his life on the run (stupid accidents, desperate escapes, conflicts with local lowlifes). Along his abdomen are larger overlapping lines from confrontations (with a cleaver). On his right shoulder is the perfect outline of a half a hot iron. Alek is considered very physically attractive in a slightly crushed and broken way something he is not even slightly aware of. His group of friends often uses his looks to manipulate others, which Alek takes as a huge joke. Relationships Family If asked, Aleksander will quickly state that he has no family, which is probably a little less than half the truth. His family orginally consisted of a mother and father, who were divorced before he even was born. As the youth in Aleksander's did not have any children, his destiny was passed to the youngest child of one of his living relatives, Brigit Gestorben. Alek does not have any particularly vivid memories of the time she devoted to him during his earliest years as he viewed her as more of a person who provided for him than a mother figure that radiated warmth and familiarity. He was partially right. Brigit, having accepted the fate of her son did not attempt to show Alek any kind of affection, physical or emotional. While she did indeed take care of him making sure he was not malnourished as an infant child, she did more damage than good, influencing his beliefs on human relationships and interactions within a family environment. Her general apathy towards the child did not change after the official announcement of his destiny, to which he reacted relatively calmly too. She, along with his massive fear of what lied ahead were the main factors that resulted in his sudden disappearance from home and eventually the small german town. Aleksanders life as a runaway from death itself lasted a total of four years. Upon his departure at age twelve, to his enrollment to Ever After High at sixteen. As a preteen, he followed a path that allowed him to stay relatively close to multiple relatives which he repeatedly stayed with only to eventually leave each time. What ensued next had very very little organization on and coherency. He was lost among streets, had several encounters with violent street fighters, and had made desperate attempts to find transportation anywhere he could. This often ended up with stealing food as a hitchhiker, breaking into cars to steal clothes, money, anything he could find. He learned various tricks, improved his dexterity, learned slangs and how to live about the streets, which benefited him the quicker he learned. At age fourteen, the realization that he was unaware of what he was running from hit particularly hard causing him to gather the courage to finally leave Germany in a desperate effort to permanently disappear. The years that followed are a blur in his head; There are not exactly any stories that he can recall, and even if he was able to, he wouldn't be able to convey what he would like it to: the monotony, the desperation, the day-in day-out loneliness. What he does see are images: snapshot memories that he would retain over the years no matter how mundane they might have seemed at the time. Moments that were a kaleidoscopic view of a farce of a childhood. Hunched into a coat waiting for a ferry to arrive, trying to blend into the bumper-car traffic of a busy airport, learning to drive in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night with a strangers impatient voice at his ear. Learning new languages, focusing on verbs and tone and conjugations, ignorant to the fact that how was your day is also a topic of conversation. Eating leftovers for as many days as they could stretch to minimize trips to the supermarket but trying to be seen enough in public that no neighbors would think him queer and reclusive enough to pay attention to. Scars and bruises that never seemed to fade, the smell of cash in his timeworn bag and the terror in his eyes when he looked at a mirror. Being afraid, suspicious of every single person he encountered. Being alone and desperate and tired of everything. When the school staff finally located him, he didn't resist. Friends the entire lit club + everyone faces him differently i need to write this when it's not 4 am Romance Alek is bisexual. In his case, he does not lean towards men more than women, or women more than men. It is mostly just a matter of whoever he feels more comfortable around and has the stronger bond with. It also depends on your level of hotness. Keran Rødt Keran and Alek had a purely physical relationship that lasted for a few weeks. It was solemnly based on the fact that despite practically hating each other with all the might of their being they were still attracted to each other. When questioned about it then, they claimed they were testing some kind of love/hate theory. When questioned about it now, they break into a litany of curses and Alek angrily thanking him for getting his homework done. Daulius Song After Sage Idason's unfortunate discovery of what Alek and his newfound friends had been up to the summer before their last year ( to be described in book's fanfic that she yet has to write ), in a desperate attempt to fix the already utterly complicated situation, Roran Robber sent Aleksander to persuade Daulius to join their literature club, mainly investing on his good looks. Needless to say, things didn't exactly go out as planned. The two immediately clicked, casually engaging into a long conversation about common interests (Greek literature and art) which quickly escalated into a heated make out session behind a shelf in the poetry section. Fascinated by his new companion Alek frequently found excuses to slip out of the literature club meeting to meet up with him, causing a strange mixture of pride and wrath to the rest of the members, who eventually, despite themselves, support him spending time with the enemy. The nature of their relationship is more casual than romantic - they refer to themselves as intellectual conversationists with benefits. Truthfully, If Alek allowed himself too he could have easily fallen in love with Daulius as the image of him he's constantly painting in his head and that excited jump his heart makes when their about to meet remind him from time to time. However he isn't a fool, not at all. He know well that the consequences of any kind of real romance at this point of his life are going to be, well, tragic to say at least. He values Daulius as a partner who he can freely share his thoughts with and truly doesn't want his death to be more than a slight inconvenience to him. I think they eventually talk about that don't they smh I'm gonna check l8r Sylvi Tyven hillarious things hormonal teenagers do Parent's Story: Death's Messangers Death comes across a giant and is badly beaten. The young man comes across the beaten-down Death and helps him up. The grateful Death promises the young man that, though he cannot spare the young man, when the time comes he will send messengers beforehand to warn the young man of his death. Many years later, the man, no longer young, is caught by surprise when Death comes for him. The man complains to Death that Death did not send messengers beforehand to warn him as Death had promised. But Death points out that he had sent messengers: illness, the signs of aging, and sleep. The man then allows Death to take him without further complaint. Trivia * Alek works at the only pizza restaurant in Bookend. It's a small and slightly greasy diner with red vinyl booths which he likes to fall asleep on. * Alek's birthday is on the Fourth of July which is ironic since I guess it's not a holiday in the fairytale universe. * He is a Cancer and the common characteristics of his zodiac sign strangely fit his personality: **'Cancer Strengths:' Tenacious, highly imaginative, emotional, sympathetic, persuasive **'Cancer Weaknesses:' short tempered, moody, pessimistic, suspicious, manipulative, insecure * According to Persea Sirené he is ranked first in looks out of the members of the literature club followed closely by her. According to Alek, she is making fun of him. * He is actually fairly talented at spellcrosse and was offered the position of the striker mutiple but kindly denied due to lack of interest in repetitive practices. * His favorite food is pomegranates. He will eat anything as long as there are pomegranates on it. * The names in his previews fake ids were; Nick, Ethan, Lukas and Adam. He particularly favored Nick because of the way it sounds. * His first name Aleksander is of Greek origin and can be interpreted as 'defender of man'. His last name, Gestorben literally means death in German because Book was running out of ideas. Tropes *'Bilingual Bonus:' Speaks German, French, and English. ** Speaks to Roran in German to prevent the other members of the literature club agents from understanding their conversation regarding his death. ** Later learns Russian with Sylvi and Latsov. * Blatant Lies: When Alek says he's fine, he's usually in a disgustingly terrible shape. He gets called out on it a lot. * Deadpan Snarker: '''basically every word that comes out of his mouth. * '''Friendless Background: On the run basically all his life and the son of an apathetic mother before that. * Humble Goal: '''Is trying to simply stay alive. * '''Physical Scars, Psychological Scars: doesn't need a further explanation. * Pretty Boy: Slender, short, and strangely attractive enough to be used as a force of seduction by his friend group. * '''Rage Against the Reflection: '''He despises his true reflection because of the fear that he looks terrified all the time. Quotes angry kid swears at everything Outfits the edge Gallery IMG_1553.JPG|Alek sketches meant for a Twenty One Pilots "The Run And Go" animatic I will never finish Almostdeadkid.jpg|super messy 4 am sketch Category:Roybels Category:Males Category:Death's Messengers Category:Bisexual